Heng Yu's ability to keep abreast of the latest developments has marked the company as a leader in its field for well over a decade, and according to vice president sales and R&D Alex Chan there is no sign of the pace slackening.

"I think there is the potential to grow a lot in the US and also in Europe," Chan observes, adding that Heng Yu has established several "big partnerships" that he expects to boost market share this year.

Heng Yu's current success is just reward for a company that was established in 1990, initially to supply peripheral devices to the banking sector on the mainland.

By 1996 Heng Yu had diversified into Point-Of-Sale (POS) products and begun to develop a special expertise in keyboards, targeting international markets in a move to reduce its dependence on the increasingly price-competitive mainland business.

The company's product range includes thermal printers, PIN pads, card readers and a range of special smart card reader, magnetic stripe card reader and scanner keyboards. "The printers are a new line, introduced only last year but they are already selling briskly to our POS clients," Chan adds.

He says Heng Yu has been aggressively working to establish its OEM/ODM business in international markets for the last five years, and is finally beginning to enjoy the fruits of its efforts.

"The US currently accounts for about 40% of our business, and the rest is Europe and the Asia-Pacific region, including the mainland," Chan reveals. "So far we have tended to focus on big customers like IBM, Ricoh and NEC, but now we are also going to find dealers to sell our own branded products, starting in Europe where we have a lot of distributors."

Heng Yu plans to launch its own Activekey brand this year, which it eventually plans to establish internationally and provide a further profit boost to its existing close partnerships with key customers.

"We build customised keyboards for a lot of customers all over the world," Chan explains. "We also get assistance from our partners in terms of feedback."

This market intelligence has allowed the company to stay one step ahead of many competitors in addressing evolving customer needs, and Heng Yu believes firmly in investing in the future.

"We allocate one-third of our resources to designing new products and two-thirds to customer projects," he notes. "We have five engineers in Hong Kong and 25 engineers at our mainland factory in Zhuhai that employs about 400 people in total."

Minimum orders are usually about 200 units, although the company has processed 200,000 keyboards for a security industry customer, while delivery depends on the technology involved.

"Completely new orders usually take 3-4 months from start to delivery, if they involve our current technology," Chan explains. "Completely new technology can take about six months, while repeat orders can be as little as 2-3 weeks."

Ease of integration with existing systems is one of the most important attributes of Heng Yu's range of keyboards, card readers and printers, and the company ensures smooth interfaces by complying with a number of international standards.

"We can support a lot of countries' settings and codes," Chan insists, adding that Heng Yu has ISO 9001 and UKAS quality management accreditation. "In Europe, for example, there are some special characters which our current keyboards can support."

Heng Yu is looking forward to seeing its own brand in the marketplace in the near future, and plans plenty of promotions to support the new label. "We've called it Activekey because keyboards are our main product - and we want to be very active in the market," concludes Chan.

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